Designing out food poverty: Driftime's GRO-OP co-operative concept

We all know that maintaining healthy food habits and 5-a-day routines is easier said than done. Even those who have the money for a healthy diet end up wasting a large percentage of the food they buy, and some food doesn't even make it to consumers, amounting to a collective total of 9.5 million tonnes of food waste in a single year in the UK.

Food waste is increasingly becoming a social issue, as 8.4 million people in the UK are currently in food poverty. Unfortunately, when it comes to cutting back on food costs, healthy foods are the first to go, with 60% of food-insecure households cutting back on fruit and 44% on vegetables.

On the climate and environmental front, food waste accounts for up to 10% of all global carbon emissions (more than four times the amount of CO2e emissions produced by the world's aviation industry). As food waste breaks down, it releases methane gas. This gas is 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide, as it can trap heat within the atmosphere, damaging the ozone layer and compounding the climate crisis at an alarming rate.

Creative problem solving

We're already seeing plans to align food systems with climate targets, including at COP28 last year, which saw the UK join over 150 countries in signing a landmark declaration. Food redistribution charities like FareShare are also doing their bit to rebalance the narrative, with 91% of the food they distributed in 2022 being surplus that would otherwise have gone to waste.

Still, you'll wonder what this has to do with the creative industries. Creativity and design go way beyond making something beautiful; problem-solving is ingrained in the nature of designers, who have a huge part to play in driving the world towards a greener, more socially balanced future.

Brand and digital design studio Driftime rose to the challenge on this particular issue and designed the GRO-OP concept, a digital platform that connects local growers and grazers. Through GRO-OP, people growing the produce can offer their extra potatoes, peas, pears and more to people looking for fresh produce at an affordable price.

Instead of going to the compost heap, surplus food is redistributed to those who need it, benefiting both people and the planet.

GRO-OP was born from Driftime's Hackathon, a collaborative and intensive experiment that tests what the team can achieve with creativity in an all-hands four-day sprint. "We worked hard to build a digital solution to a real-world problem that has sturdy legs and a viable business model, resulting in GRO-OP, your go-to community cooperative", says Driftime CCO and co-founder Abb-d Taiyo.

Transparency and usability

While apps exist to help restaurants sell surplus food at a lower price, along with apps that help users manage their allotments, there aren't any products that help allotment owners sell their produce, according to the studio. Taiyo explains how combatting food waste can come in many forms, but GRO-OP "specifically helps those from urban areas access healthy, organic produce at a low price, whilst enabling local growers to share their surplus and, in some cases, make a modest profit".

It took a week to create GRO-OP from the ground up, "designing, researching, and writing puns about peas for four focused days", Taiyo adds.

Driftime's approach to the UX/UI design of GRO-OP was to implement "invisible design", aligning with the idea that the platform should get a lot done without asking too much from the growers or grazers. "By employing AI in the produce identification process, we stripped back the often lengthy and extensive task of listing an offering into what feels like an intuitive and familiar Google search, assisted by AI rather than led by it", says Taiyo.

Transparency was also important to the design team, meaning the design had to be accessible and usable for all demographics with zero learning curve, without it looking too overdone or conventional. He explains how the UX/UI "playfully nudges recipients into sustainable behaviours", making subtle suggestions such as walking to pick up produce rather than using fuel by indicating the walking time on a map. "Seasonal Suggestions" are also tactfully placed throughout the app to promote seasonal growing and grazing, keeping humans in sync with the planet.

Going against the grain

Cues from the natural world feature throughout the GRO-OP graphic identity, from the logo's "growing" animation to the typography's organic shape. Driftime designed the identity to be "contemporary and spirited," says Taiyo, complementing the copywriting with approachable fonts and shapes to highlight GRO-OP's "intentionally pun-led and informal language".

Taiyo says: "GRO-OP is designed as a platform that feels more like a cheerful chat around the allotment than a serious marketplace, and we feel like the language, both visual and written, helps to encourage that outlook.

"In many ways, GRO-OP's graphic identity is driven by the copywriting, using tongue-in-cheek puns and playful humour to build a brand and tone of voice that feels funny, approachable, and relatable."

The obvious visual choice for anything planet-related is various hues of green, but Driftime purposely avoided this, instead opting for a deep purple colourway. Taiyo describes it as "more ownable and interesting," adding that it encourages "an alternative visual framework for a fresh local growing cooperative."

People over profit

Solving an offline challenge with a digital solution comes with its own challenges. There was an ambient difficulty when it came to designing a platform that encourages benevolent actions.

GRO-OP ultimately asks its growers to prioritise community over business and people over profit. The studio took this into account when designing the flow for how people list produce, ensuring the items are labelled as "free" after a certain number of days as default.

Taiyo adds that the app "explicitly encourages growers to set prices that feel realistic, affordable, and most importantly, fair". Empowering recipients to take positive action of their own volition was another challenge, which he says was solved by using "invisible design to subtly encourage good decision-making that fulfils growers and grazers alike".

Before GRO-OP reaches beyond its conceptual phase, Driftime is looking to test demand with a waitlist. According to Taiyo, the studio is also working on additional research to bring it to market with a strong and viable strategy that can be accelerated by a call out for collaboration with like-minded brands and businesses.